Coupling up to a trailer

[captain_caveman_76]

Carryfast:
There’s a predictable pattern there.I think it goes along the lines of there was/is nothing wrong with the way we did it with steel suspension it wasn’t broke so why try to fix it.Bearing in mind you’ve left out the scenario of trailers getting dropped on the road because someone raised the air suspension with the jaws fouling the pin.

Do you still get up to turn your (black and white) telly over? That was a superior method too with no arguing over the remote plus obvious health benefits.

■■■■ YOU PROGRESS!!

[reef]

newmercman:
So you lined up with the air suspension dropped on the unit and the 5th wheel just under the nose of the trailer, applied the parking brake on the trailer and then jumped up, put the suzies on, back in the cab to lift the suspension, hit the pin, tug forward, put handbrake on, wind legs up, release trailer brake, kick tyres, check lights, put number plate on, check load as you’ve always done etc etc etc.

^This exactly! Thanks for saving me having to type my procedure, nmm…

[carryfast]

Captain Caveman 76:

Carryfast:
There’s a predictable pattern there.I think it goes along the lines of there was/is nothing wrong with the way we did it with steel suspension it wasn’t broke so why try to fix it.Bearing in mind you’ve left out the scenario of trailers getting dropped on the road because someone raised the air suspension with the jaws fouling the pin.

Do you still get up to turn your (black and white) telly over? That was a superior method too with no arguing over the remote plus obvious health benefits.

■■■■ YOU PROGRESS!!

To be fair a remote controlled colour tele sounds more like progress.Than smashing the unit against the trailer because it wasn’t stopped in time before raising the suspension to the correct height,or the trailer falling off down the road because it wasn’t coupled properly because the pin had fouled the jaws when the unit was lifted,all that because of lowering it when putting it under the trailer to save getting a bit of grease on the lines.

[newmercman]

It’s not about avoiding greasing up the airlines, that’s an unintended bonus of coupling an air suspended unit in the correct manner. It also makes sense to try to achieve this as then the 5th wheel grease stays on the 5th wheel where it belongs.

It isn’t a difficult process, you approach the trailer dropping the air as you do so, you do this at a slow pace so you don’t overshoot the pin and mangle the back of the cab or put the 5th wheel directly under the pin. You should be able to judge this using your mirrors, but if you are unsure you can always jump out and check that the pin is behind the 5th wheel, then you lift the suspension and if you feel resistance from the trailer then you’re good to go, if there’s no resistance then it’s time to jump out again and raise the landing gear until the rubbing plate sits on the 5th wheel, then you bang under gently while listening for that all important sound of the jaws locking around the pin, do a gentle tug test, apply the handbrake and complete the rest of the hooking up procedure.

Using this method is the most mechanically sympathetic method, you’re not ramming the pin into the jaws, you’re not slipping the clutch forcing your way under the trailer, you’re not applying any lateral force to the landing gear and you’re not putting sudden shock loads through the shock absorbers, which even though that is their function, is much kinder to them, as a bonus you avoid getting 5th wheel grease at the leading edge of the rubbing plate too and this prevents the suzies getting covered in grease, but this is just a bonus, the other reasons are why this method is the only way you should couple up to a trailer.

[yourhavingalarf]

Used to collect Scac and Euroway ro-ro trailers…

Out of Pompey docks or the railway triangle and believe me, they way some of them had been dropped the only option you had was to reverse and whack it as hard as you could and I do mean as hard as possible! If you missed that, the whole cab would be off, not just some little girly dent above the suzies lol.

Everything that I thought I’d lost in the cab the previous week, pens, lighters, boxes of matches etc would come flying down on your head. Brilliant!

■■■■■■■ the lot of ya lol

[reef]

yourhavingalarf:
■■■■■■■ the lot of ya lol

I’d rather be a ■■■■■ with a paycheck than a prat with a P45

[yourhavingalarf]

Never missed a pin in my life.

More likely to get yer P45 if you didn’t pick it up.

‘Sorry to wake you boss but, the nasty stevedores have dropped my trailer in a big puddle and it’s really difficult to get under it without smudging my mascara, can you send a wrecker to lift it up please?’

[the_maoster]

newmercman:
It’s not about avoiding greasing up the airlines, that’s an unintended bonus of coupling an air suspended unit in the correct manner. It also makes sense to try to achieve this as then the 5th wheel grease stays on the 5th wheel where it belongs.

It isn’t a difficult process, you approach the trailer dropping the air as you do so, you do this at a slow pace so you don’t overshoot the pin and mangle the back of the cab or put the 5th wheel directly under the pin. You should be able to judge this using your mirrors, but if you are unsure you can always jump out and check that the pin is behind the 5th wheel, then you lift the suspension and if you feel resistance from the trailer then you’re good to go, if there’s no resistance then it’s time to jump out again and raise the landing gear until the rubbing plate sits on the 5th wheel, then you bang under gently while listening for that all important sound of the jaws locking around the pin, do a gentle tug test, apply the handbrake and complete the rest of the hooking up procedure.

Using this method is the most mechanically sympathetic method, you’re not ramming the pin into the jaws, you’re not slipping the clutch forcing your way under the trailer, you’re not applying any lateral force to the landing gear and you’re not putting sudden shock loads through the shock absorbers, which even though that is their function, is much kinder to them, as a bonus you avoid getting 5th wheel grease at the leading edge of the rubbing plate too and this prevents the suzies getting covered in grease, but this is just a bonus, the other reasons are why this method is the only way you should couple up to a trailer.

Carryfast, with the greatest of respect please print off a copy of NMM’s above post, hell, you can even laminate it if you want, but please read, understand and digest it because it is 100% spot on. Things have moved on and the above is the accepted correct procedure and no amount of waffle, prevarication or numerous “ironically’s” or “feel free to explains” will change it.

Accept it and roll with it, it’s a new world order old bean.

[eagerbeaver]

CF, whilst no one is reading this at the moment, I’m gonna tip you off…most auto’s now have a ’ crawler ’ gear for reversing. Hell, the arsetronic in my DAF even shows a delightful picture of Terence the tortoise just to make sure.

Auto’s are perfectly controllable mate unless you are a raging ■■■. In which case it really doesn’t matter what equipment you have.

[reef]

yourhavingalarf:
Never missed a pin in my life.

More likely to get yer P45 if you didn’t pick it up.

‘Sorry to wake you boss but, the nasty stevedores have dropped my trailer in a big puddle and it’s really difficult to get under it without smudging my mascara, can you send a wrecker to lift it up please?’

afaik nobody in this thread has said they wouldn’t pick up a trailer, I know I haven’t, and I can assure you I’ve never warn mascara (and I lived through the 80’s ) lets at least try and keep one TNUK thread in the realms of reality eh?

You could always start a separate thread concerning your fetish of 40+ yr old truck drivers wearing mascara, if that’s what really floats your boat sweetie

[switchlogic]

It sure does take some know it all ego to still be telling drivers they’re doing it all wrong 20 years into retirement! If I ever retire (unlikely) I’ll have lost interest in this industry after 20 minutes let alone 20 years!

[newmercman]

switchlogic:
It sure does take some know it all ego to still be telling drivers they’re doing it all wrong 20 years into retirement! If I ever retire (unlikely) I’ll have lost interest in this industry after 20 minutes let alone 20 years!

Early retirement or paid to never walk back through the company gates again?

My money’s on the latter [emoji23] [emoji23] [emoji23]

[juddian]

the maoster:

newmercman:
It’s not about avoiding greasing up the airlines, that’s an unintended bonus of coupling an air suspended unit in the correct manner. It also makes sense to try to achieve this as then the 5th wheel grease stays on the 5th wheel where it belongs.

It isn’t a difficult process, you approach the trailer dropping the air as you do so, you do this at a slow pace so you don’t overshoot the pin and mangle the back of the cab or put the 5th wheel directly under the pin. You should be able to judge this using your mirrors, but if you are unsure you can always jump out and check that the pin is behind the 5th wheel, then you lift the suspension and if you feel resistance from the trailer then you’re good to go, if there’s no resistance then it’s time to jump out again and raise the landing gear until the rubbing plate sits on the 5th wheel, then you bang under gently while listening for that all important sound of the jaws locking around the pin, do a gentle tug test, apply the handbrake and complete the rest of the hooking up procedure.

Using this method is the most mechanically sympathetic method, you’re not ramming the pin into the jaws, you’re not slipping the clutch forcing your way under the trailer, you’re not applying any lateral force to the landing gear and you’re not putting sudden shock loads through the shock absorbers, which even though that is their function, is much kinder to them, as a bonus you avoid getting 5th wheel grease at the leading edge of the rubbing plate too and this prevents the suzies getting covered in grease, but this is just a bonus, the other reasons are why this method is the only way you should couple up to a trailer.

Carryfast, with the greatest of respect please print off a copy of NMM’s above post, hell, you can even laminate it if you want, but please read, understand and digest it because it is 100% spot on. Things have moved on and the above is the accepted correct procedure and no amount of waffle, prevarication or numerous “ironically’s” or “feel free to explains” will change it.

Accept it and roll with it, it’s a new world order old bean.

Agreed.

Any new drivers, if you follow this procedure you won’t go far wrong.

My only difference is that because i am on tanks, and lining them isn’t quite as simple, i open the door and lean out…not suggesting anyone else should do this cos H&S gestapo would have a fit at some places and some half wit would fall out and sue me…
I would also suggest looking out the window to confirm your lining up, and to get a better perspective of how far under the front of the trailer you are, until you have more experience of your particular motor.

Grease on the catwalk and air lines isn’t the end of the world, assuming you don’t mind getting covered in the filthy stuff, but there is no point whatsoever the mechanics pumping 3lb of grease over the fifth wheel on service just for the first pick up to see it smeared up the leading edge of a trailer rubbing plate, then the fifth wheel starting to screech and ‘sticking’ having dry patches 2 weeks later.

[weeto]

switchlogic:
It sure does take some know it all ego to still be telling drivers they’re doing it all wrong 20 years into retirement! If I ever retire (unlikely) I’ll have lost interest in this industry after 20 minutes let alone 20 years!

You won’t be able to get away from it that from “it” that easy.

[remy]

Here’s something that happened to me, i mean a mate of mine when i, err he was in a hurry to pick up a trailer. He charged in reverse under it without checking the height then the fifth wheel hit the pin and he came to a stop. Trouble was the pin didn’t go into the fifth wheel but slid over the top and dropped in the hole enough to lock the jaws without it being in there. Luckily said driver was in his own yard and the garage used a dummy pin to unlock it, they may have said something about a dummy driver but i forget

[remy]

Here’s something that happened to me, i mean a mate of mine when i, err he was in a hurry to pick up a trailer. He charged in reverse under it without checking the height then the fifth wheel hit the pin and he came to a stop. Trouble was the pin didn’t go into the fifth wheel but slid over the top and dropped in the hole enough to lock the jaws without it being in there. Luckily said driver was in his own yard and the garage used a dummy pin to unlock it, they may have said something about a dummy driver but i forget

[remy]

Well that was clever of me.

[fatboy_slimslow]

newmercman:
Then it all changed, somehow we all turned into idiots over night and drivers started smashing the back of the cab into the trailer by not using the air suspension correctly, drivers started split coupling without setting the trailer parking brake and drivers started jumping out of the cab without applying the handbrake and we had driverless lorries rolling around the yard killing people and knocking buildings down.

Now we have drivers jumping in and out of their cab like a jack in the box, checking this, checking that, turning off the engine and removing keys from the ignition and yet hooking up to a trailer is as simple a process as shutting a door, how did it become such a drama?

you sir! are on my wavelength. it ain’t rocket science.

[juddian]

Remy,
you don’t have to ■■■■ the connecting up to trigger the jaws locking with the king pin sitting on, not in, the jaws.

Following a trailer dropping incident where i worked many years ago, at the time we all thought and said it couldn’t happen, little did we know, a few weeks or months later i proved it could myself, so much for what we thought.

Had to pick up a loaded trailer which had been dropped on uneven ground facing down a slight hill to boot, the odd angles probably contributed to the problem.

Anyway backed under and the jaws locked home, but something about the sound wasn’t right, that satisfying kerlunk wasn’t as satisfying as usual, so i picked it and dragged it gently down onto level ground and went to have a poke nose, sure enough a gap between fifth wheel and rubbing plate and yep shine torch up its bum to find the king pin sitting comfortably on top of the jaws which were fully closed so dog clip could have and did indeed go in.
I think i realised the pin wasn’t engaged when first picked it up, but at the angle it was sitting at i could have picked it up again and again till i was blue in the face and it would still not have been right, so better to just drag it down gently to where i could sort it out proper.

So take a warning youngsters, the dog clip in means bugger all despite it being an all important box to tick on the corporate check sheet of pure ■■■■■■■■, all it does is makes it more difficult for a vandal to pull the pin for you or for something to get caught on a sharp turn and somehow extract the pin as you straighten back up again…which might sound far fetched but where my relative works, not a Brit company, they now have ungreased teflon coated fifth wheels with no traditional safety locking system (buggered if know why either ) which successfully allowed a couple of unplanned trailer drops due to the trailer itself grabbing the pin and unhitching mid-tight-turn …needless to say that is now sorted.

Since then whenever i pick a trailer up i just shine me torch up its bum to see the jaws have the pin securely, takes 2 seconds and can save you a world of grief even if just once in your driving lives.
That dropped trailer incident, the lorry had travelled empty from Bristol, same as the other 364 evenings and it came off on The Embankment just along from the house of ill repute when the lorry found a bump in the road hard enough to bounce the trailer out.

On this subject it might be interesting if we all asked our trainers/assessors where we work if they’ve come across this or advise drivers accordingly…if they don’t and you have a trailer dropping incident and the circs are right you might just have a get out of jail card there.

[martinviking]

Juddian:
On this subject it might be interesting if we all asked our trainers/assessors where we work if they’ve come across this or advise drivers accordingly…if they don’t and you have a trailer dropping incident and the circs are right you might just have a get out of jail card there.

Yep, I do our Assessments & Training, 1st thing I always do, (listen for the Kerlunk) then show them how & what to look for when shining the torch up its Bum, then put the Dog Clip in, followed by all the other steps. [emoji106]